"It is no accident that the queen is the deadliest of pieces; the manly pawn: the weakest." - Luis Camara Silva.
Goennec Pen #: 3.
Name: Queen.
How would you use him/her: As a character, of course. I would love to roleplay with her if I won her. And besides that, she would be super fun to draw and color, so whenever I had extra time I would do some of her. She'd be another one of my few loves. <3 I can name all of my CS characters off the top of my head, that's how much I wuve them. xDD
Personality: Cold. Reared to be as cold as stone and as unmovable as ice, Queen has retained her grounding morals to this age. Cruel. Borne from parents whom hated one another passionately, Queen experienced sadism at a very young age. As she flourished under the hand of a stern mother and the weak father who gave in to his daughter’s every whim, Queen was treated with the respect and dignity her name demanded. Once young, she was spoiled rotten, taken anywhere she wanted, allowed to explore where the other kids had to be herded back to sires and dams.
Life changed her plans when she was stranded with one mother, however, and Queen quickly adapted to conform to her instead. She was withdrawn on her own opinion and forced to respect her mother’s. So she learned submission at this level, still young and impressionable herself, and earned the skill of whimpering and compromises.
When she split from her cheerless dam, she discovered the opportunity of acting. Smooth-faced and empty-eyed, she taught herself to put up the best blank mask she had ever seen on a beast. Doling out lessons and treats, Queen learned that to retain to her indifference to suffering was to keep her head out of the black water of living.
A brief, fluttering moment of happiness. The barest touch of love rubbing along her velveteen fur slowly softened her. Relaxation, adoration, depravation, pseudo-paradise. The lesson of finding that she had not been the best actress in the world. The uncovering of finding an actor better even then her.
Returning to her past life, Queen landed on her feet in a puddle of life’s lapping waters. She refuses to go down without a fight. Now she travels, nomadic, feeding herself and avoiding all the others she can find.
There are rumors about her, those that flit around like whispers carried on butterfly backs. The ideas that she’s not sane anymore. The worry that perhaps the girl is just a little murderous. The fear that chills the bones of those even momentarily in her company.
Queen rejoices at her reputation. She loves having those fools bow to her in complete mercy, figuring if they show weakness she will leave them be.
Ah, one day they will learn.
History: The first memory I have is that of chill.
I was born up on a mountain, in the cooling edge of autumn bridging on winter. My parents had met only once before to conceive me, but at that young and foolish of an age I was uncomprehending of their distaste for one another. My sire had agreed to stay long enough to see me stretch out of a childhood.
I was unaware from the start how much I would one day miss about being a kid.
Growing up in between parents who barely tried to make amends after arguments, who never bothered hiding their fights from me, I misunderstood love. I thought that this was how all of the parents acted with one another. When I was old enough to wobble around on unstable legs, we ventured down our steep mountain to meet up with the wintering, stranger herd down there.
I was quick to make friends with the others my size, even though I got some sass for my bizarre coloration and the twist of my onyx horns. I held my little head up high and ignored their insults, proving to them that I knew how to handle myself with or without the curved devil horns.
My father was always supportive of me. He encouraged me to play where no others were allowed, nuzzled and complimented me when mother was too bad to even see straight. There was a gentleness in him that I found nowhere else, and in the company of my father, I could actually relax. He saw this, and spoiled me with his time constantly; away from the smothering contact of my dam, he was a whole different persona.
He near always accompanied me when I explored down to the herd, and with him I briefly felt safe. Swamped in the shadow of his tall, regal form, my dad had always been my childhood hero.
The first time I saw adults in love bewildered me. I was honestly confused by the tender brushes along their manes, the playful nipping of gentle bites at the itchy flank. I instantly headed for home, berating my parents for hours on what I had just seen. When my father finally reached his temperamental breaking point and yelled that that was how love was supposed to be, I withdrew.
My mother and father had their worst fight that night; that I can vaguely remember. I was curled up in the dark, clinging shadows of the bushes, slim legs tucked to my stomach, face smothered in my chest to try and stop the ringing, angry words.
When I officially was roused from my sleep, my father was gone.
I was a year old at that time.
The seasons flew by in a blur. Without my father to rein in some of her temper, my mother was an insanity. She flew at me day after day, crumbling down my spirit, forcing my own stubborn-ness down my throat.
It took me half a year to finally understand that I was never going to escape the confinement of my mother’s mental state, and I took to submission. I begged and pleaded to avoid the whiplash, slunk around her ankles like somebody’s beaten dog. It worked for a while, months even, while she contemplated having a slave.
When winter spun around and dazzled the world in frosty white, my favorite season alleviated my stress. My mother paired off with another male, leaving me in her wake, forgetting all about her crimson stained daughter.
Personally, I didn’t mind one bit.
The winter was a hard and long one, days upon days of snow that slapped, it was carried by wings so rough, and hail that left tiny welts all over bumped skin. I traveled the entire season, never allowing my legs to go weak, branching into another year a few seasons back and almost close enough to my third to taste it on the air.
Spring came in a shocking façade, for it disappeared the fog right out of the air and replaced it with velvet greens and soft shoots peppering the split soil. The new diet was easier on my frame, and it brought a lush quality to the land that cheered me right out of the bottomless quake I lived in.
I weaved in and out of herds, never feeling really like I belonged. With the nip of spring prodding males in the flank, courting rituals began. Skirmishes broke out among strong males over the possession of their beautiful, cooing females, and every time I slid through the fights, I was always reminded of my mother leading my harmless father on. Eventually I tired of the emotional memory it flared, so I began completely avoiding herds, taking to the status of a loner.
Grazing on the crest of a solo hill, I was approached by the first male I’d seen alone since my father. The mismatched cadence of paw pads and hoof-beats tickled my ears and I glanced up, frizzy scarlet mane tangled in the breeze, cocking one ear at the sight of the bold-faced male cantering up to me.
The initial thing I spotted about him was that he was the color of tar. Tar was the sticky, oozy substance that the brain-lacking humans speared their paths of rumbling thunder with. Black as the sky before the rain clouds swept in, and over-marked with a rather feminine filigree of sterling silver. The first thing I recognized about him was that he looked like a female pretending to me a ram.
But as he came up to me, slowing his gait when he got closer, dipping his head with a note of submissive apology in his gaze, I was immediately enthralled. All the males I had met this season who had sought to court me were verbose, loud, and tiring. I had quickly grown impatient with their childish antics and separated from them. Their supposed dominance entranced memories I hated, so I disappeared with the cold spring wind.
This stranger though… he was different. It was something I respected instantly, as I could see it as he curtailed up to me with submission to spare. He was allowing me, the female, to be the leading role in the seduction ritual.
At first, I was still unimpressed and uninterested in honestly finding a mate. So I turned my rump to him and leaned back down to resume my meal of the shoots. His laughter was contagious as he saw what I’d done, and I grinned secretly to myself, allowing the first tickles of happiness I had felt in years.
The first real gleeful emotion I had felt since my dad’s desertion.
He tempted me for months. Where all the other males spotted a challenge, worked on me for a few days, and were distracted away by other, prettier females, the male I knew not the name of followed me. For a while, I complained to him over long distances that he was creepy, that my own personal shadow needn’t be such a stalker. And always, his warm, lifting laughter would rush back to me, welcome to sing in my ears. I loved that sound, and after a while, I expected it.
Conversations began to pepper between us, though I usually tried to escape them. Once I got the hang of actually interacting with another beast, I found myself allowing him to sidle closer day after day, until we fed right next to each other, flanks touching whenever we shifted on our feet.
I needled out of him that his name was something unfamiliar, in some bizarre language I had never heard of. He chuckled at my impatience for the copious amounts of vowels in his name so he provided me with a simple nickname instead or burdening my tongue with his original. I came to know him as the calm beast named Nai.
The seasons curled and unfurled around us, Mother Nature stretching in her cavernous den as she dozed and lived during the year. We were together for a good year before he finally made a more romantic move on me; a soft brush of his velvet muzzle against my own. It was at that simple moment that I realized, with a surprised jolt, that I loved Nai. I loved him more then I had ever recognized love to be.
In the beginning, I resented the emotion. I treated him coldly and mercilessly, seeking to get him to remove himself from my side to escape the aching feeling. But Nai had loved me since he had first laid eyes on me, and he stuck to me like a burr, refusing stubbornly to get off of my nomadic territory space.
Days slid past in my childish temper tantrum. Nai began to serenade me constantly, much to my further anger. He sang long songs in that smooth, throaty language of his, and as they lulled me to sleep every night, I slowly came around to the idea of love.
I resisted for another month, much to my delight. Logically, I assumed that if I forgave his attention again and again for days to come, that he would eventually tire of the never-ending race and desert me. But Nai surprised me and never did, working his courage up every morning to bring me to enthrallment once again.
The day I gave into Nai was the day I found happiness. I forgot my ancient childhood memories, buried them with a promise to suffocate them with the new gleeful idea of living with Nai. We promised one another great love and lifelong companionship, and we settled into a route of traveling the land over the calmer seasons, and vacationing at larger caves and dens when the weather got too bad.
He stayed with me for six months, now that I look back and summon it up. I remember that it was the first time I had honestly ever skipped, or pranced, or even gossiped to complete strangers how handsome and appealing my gorgeous mate was. I remember that I was utterly lost in love, and that I was happy every ticking second of it.
I had learned, over yearning and broken minds, that everything good ends sometime. When I woke up one morning alone, with the spot next to me alone and cold, I was puzzled. I searched around the local herds for days, donating all of my energy and time to trying to find Nai. I worried that perhaps he had gone out in the middle of the evening to find a present for me as he did quite often and had fallen and gotten hurt. The next spring rolled around and as I was sorting through an entire, huge herd, and asking every single member if they had seen him, I spied him.
He stood on top of a knoll as beautiful as I remembered him, regal head tilted back and up, tar-black fur ruffling in the softer breeze of the calm season. Heat and delight bubbled in my throat and I yelled his name, galloping to the hill. “Nai!” I remember foolishly squealing into the brisk air. “Nai!”
I couldn’t understand, at first, why he wasn’t reacting. My gait slowed, wary and confused at this. Perhaps I had confused him for my Nai… but when I was close enough to spot the slightest scar along the inside of his heel where he had fallen once retrieving a delicious, select berry for me, I knew for certain that it was him.
“Nai?” I asked, cocking my head, standing at the foot of the small knoll to look at him. “What are you…?” My words dried up as behind him I saw the head of a tiny cub. It blinked rapidly at me, cocking its head.
“Daddy?” The tiny thing chirped, barely old enough to stand. “Who’s that?” Nai glanced down and his eyes widened; the slightest tinge of fear touched his gaze. “Queen? What are you doing here?” He asked in utmost surprise and silently, I watched the edges of my vision grow cold.
“Daddy?” I echoed the babe, my eyes narrowing into jagged gemstones of hatred. Nai swallowed, providing no argument or refusal to my question. A blast of cold air blew through my veins, right down to the root of my bone marrow. I felt like all of the colors had been bleached out of my sight. Deadly, like the strike of a rattlesnake, I said with poison words, “I hate you.”
[will edit in]
